Faces
by Bil
Summary: How we see people is not how they see themselves. Series of unconnected character sketches. LL, HP, NL, HG, GW, RW.
1. Luna

**Faces  
**by Bil!

Disclaimer: The characters herein all belong to JKR.

A/N: This is a collection of little pieces of writing I've done that aren't really stories but highlight a particular aspect or mood of a character. Since I wouldn't post them otherwise, I've collected them together here.

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A/N: Doesn't fit with canon, but I thought it was interesting anyway. OotP insert.

**Dreaming (Luna Lovegood)  
**by Bil!

You dream of Nargles and Heliotropes because it hurts less to dream of ridiculous things than it does to dream of impossible things and you need something to fill that huge, unfillable gap left by the absence of something you can't do without. You would rather spend your days tiring yourself out looking for Erumpents than spend your nights dreaming of death (and shock and fading light).

Maybe it should hurt that people laugh at you, but really you hardly even notice. After all, they're too young to know better and you can't blame children for their ignorance even if they've lived a hundred years. You don't know how old _you_ are, but you are sure it's very old. You barely remember being young.

There are too many other faces around you to notice the ones that are laughing anyway. The wizards think only the magical dead leave ghosts, but you know better. Ghosts are everywhere, Muggle and magic, living and dead, drifting through the 'real' people until sometimes you forget which is which. Long-gone children run through the corridors of Hogwarts; prior teachers stand next to the current professors and their lectures overlap to the point of confusion.

But it isn't only at Hogwarts that you see them. The streets of London throng with more people than they can possibly hold; the North Devon Downs spill out with people who can't see each other, each seeking a solitude you cannot comprehend. The ghosts are everywhere. That's why you don't spend holidays at home, why you and your dad go chasing Snorkaks and Jackalopes all around the world.

Because _she_ is at home, every day. Her ghost, eating breakfast or washing dishes, drifting through your life as if she is still a part of it. The ghost of her in her lab, laughing, experimenting – dying.

They told you at her funeral that those who love us never truly leave us.

You wish they were wrong.

Fin


	2. Harry

A/N: Nothing that hasn't been said before, but meh. My turn. Written pre-DH.

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**Identity (Harry Potter)**

When I walk through the streets people stop me to shake my hand and touch my robes and smile at me as if they know me. They don't. They read about my every move in the papers and they think this means that I am theirs; their saviour, their friend, their hero. They know my name and they know my face and somehow they think that this means that they know me.

They don't know who I am. They don't want to know.

I am not what they want me to be.

I am the boy who dreamed of his parents dying and thought that death was green light. I am the freak who lived in a cupboard with the spiders. I am the boy who went from hated by all to loved by all and never understood either.

I am the boy who was only eleven when he first killed a man. I am the twelve-year-old who slew a basilisk, the thirteen-year-old who saw a dementor's face. The fourteen-year-old who saw a Dark Lord return to life and the fifteen-year-old who was possessed by him.

I am the boy who heard his parents die, who saw a friend die, who watched his godfather die, who saw his mentor die. I am the boy who knew Death Eaters by name and who has duelled with adults and not lost.

I am the man who never had a chance to be a child, who was given the weight of the world to carry and despised by those who expected him to save them. I am the baby who became a saviour, the boy who became a hero, and the man who became a legend.

I am all these things, but they are not who I am.

I am the lonely boy a red-haired family adopted as one of their own. I am the boy whose friends loved him so well that they would die for him. I am the adopted chick of a protective snowy owl and the hero of an oddball house elf.

I am the boy who loses at chess and wins at Quidditch, who loves Bertie Botts' Every Flavour Beans and chocolate frogs. The boy who puts off homework to the last possible moment and always ends up cramming for exams.

I am the boy with an explosive temper and a fierce loyalty, whose hair will never sit tidily and who can't see without his glasses. Whose curiosity gets him into trouble that his determination (and uncanny luck) gets him out of.

I am not Harry Potter. I am not the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, or Voldemort's Bane.

I'm just Harry.


	3. Neville

A/N: Set when Neville's about seven or eight.

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**Failure (Neville Longbottom)  
**by Bil!

Neville's Gran tells him that he played with Harry Potter once. This was a long time ago, of course, back when Neville had real parents, before Harry was the Boy Who Lived, before Harry was sent off to live in some far away place where it's safe. (Neville's always imagined it to be some kind of Arabian Nights place, with flying carpets and spicy deserts and all kinds of fantastical things, where Harry lives in the sultan's palace. Susan laughed when he tried to explain this to her so he's never told anyone else.)

Neville can believe that he's played with the Boy Who Lived. He can even believe that he went to Harry's first birthday party. None of that's a surprise, because he probably played with three quarters of the pureblood and nearly-pureblood children his age before his Gran decided that he didn't have his Dad's gift for making himself popular. (Neville doesn't like the word 'pureblood' because it makes him sound important and Neville knows he isn't.)

He liked his life better after he stopped having to play with other children all the time. He'd rather help Dussy the house elf in the garden. ("Dusty", the McMillian boy called her and that was the first time Neville ever hit anyone but he got in so much trouble for it that he's never going to do it again.)

So he's not surprised that even the Longbottom squib played with Harry Potter; no, that seems perfectly reasonable to him. But he doesn't believe his Gran when she tells him that they got on well. Neville never gets on well with other children. He wonders if Harry pulled his hair like the Weasley girl or if he just hit him over the head with a toy broom like the younger Zabini.

But he doesn't tell his Gran any of that because she likes thinking about how her grandson played with the hero when they were babies. It's something to be proud of and Neville knows that there's not much about him to be proud of. He does try, only he never gets very far. Failing is about the only thing he's any good at.

She's proud of his parents. She wants him to be proud of them too, but Neville doesn't recognise them in the stories she tells him. To Neville his parents are just the scary people in the big, echoing hospital who never remember him even though he visits them every week.

They aren't something to be proud of, not to him. He doesn't remember them hugging him or talking to him or doing whatever it is parents do. (And he's not really sure what parents do because he doesn't look when other kids are with their mums and dads because he's ashamed he doesn't know all the things they know.) To him his parents are strangers in dressing gowns that his Gran forces him to visit. Nothing more.

His Mum always gives him bubblegum wrappers. Neville never gets bubblegum, because his Gran thinks chewing it is a disgusting habit and hardly lets him have sweets anyway, but he has lots of wrappers. He keeps them in a box under his bed and sometimes he takes them out and counts them. There's one for nearly every time he's ever visited.

He tried not to go once because he hates it. He hates the hospital and the healers looking at him with disapproval because he always does the wrong thing, he hates all the sick people making him feel like it's his fault they're ill, he hates the look on his Gran's face when she looks at her son. But most of all he hates the strangers who are supposed to be his parents, blank slates that everyone expects him to somehow _love_. So he tried not to go and his Gran got even more angry than the time he hit Ernie.

She told him how lucky he is that he still has parents. Look at Harry Potter, she said (because she likes to talk about him – Neville thinks she wishes Harry was her grandson instead of just him). Harry Potter's parents are _dead_. Neville didn't tell her that that's what he envies Harry for. Harry's parents are dead and that's awful but at least they're _gone_. Neville's parents are dead but they're still here and he wishes they weren't. He knows it makes him a hateful person (which is a horrible thing to have to realise when you're only seven) but it's still true.

If he could make a bargain, Neville thinks sometimes in the dark in his room (decorated by his Gran just how his Dad's old room was), he would tell the Muggle God to take him and give back his parents. Because his Gran is proud of his Dad and he knows she's never going to be proud of him. Neville isn't someone people can be proud of. (That's another horrible thing to have to understand when you're only seven.) Dussy thinks he's a clever gardener, but that's not something to be proud of and when he tried to show his Gran she scolded him for being dirty. He only wants to make his Gran proud of him, to make up for the son she lost.

But Neville knows he's never going to be able to do it. He's just stupid, clumsy Neville. He doesn't make people proud.

He wishes he could.


	4. Harry 2

**Wings Against Glass (Harry)  
**by Bil!

Disclaimer: Not mine.

A/N: Not canon.

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When Harry is six Dudley decides that he wants an insect collection. Naturally, this means that Harry is the one who runs around the garden and the park with a butterfly net (after vivid warnings from Uncle Vernon about what will happen if he damages it in any way) and catches them. He's quite good at it, really, because he's small and swift and used to sneaking about. It's Dudley's collection, of course, and Dudley gets all the praise, but Harry feels satisfied inside because he knows he's doing a good job and it doesn't matter what his uncle and aunt say, it's _him_, not Dudley, who is so quick and clever.

Then he catches the Red Admiral. He stalks it around the garden for quarter of an hour before it deigns to land in just the right spot and even then he doesn't catch it immediately because there's something magical about a butterfly dressed in trim red and black, gently flexing its wings on a rhododendron leaf.

Then with a quick flick of his net the butterfly is in the nylon folds, flapping futilely against the mesh. He croons to it softly as he skilfully slips it into a glass jar and completes the capture. He's well practised by now and gives the insect no chance to escape during the transition; proud of his own skill, Harry smiles.

The butterfly flaps madly against the sides of the jar, but Harry waits patiently for it to settle down, crouching on the path and watching it. Once it's quieter he can put some greenery inside the jar and take it in to give to Dudley.

Only it doesn't calm down. It just keeps flapping madly against the glass so that he can hear its wings slapping against the unyielding walls and he stares at it. It doesn't stop. It won't stop and his satisfaction turns into a sick feeling in his stomach because it's panicking and frightened and it's all his fault and it just won't _stop_.

"Stop," he mutters. "Stop, stop, stop." But it won't, it won't stop, and the sound keeps going, the mindless beating of wings on an uncompromising surface, and he wants it to _stop_.

"Brilliant!" Dudley pounces on the jar, snatching it up out of Harry's hands and shaking it so that the butterfly flutters even more in mute anguish. "Mum, Mum, look what I got!"

Wings on glass, the sound echoing in Harry's head. It's going to die and it's all his fault.

The butterfly flutters and Harry breaks. He runs after Dudley and knocks the jar from his hands, making it smash on the concrete path.

It earns him a week in his cupboard, but Harry doesn't care because he has the glorious memory of a red and black butterfly climbing up on the ruins of a glass jar, stretching its wings, and flying free.

That memory is his freedom.

By the time Harry gets out of his cupboard Dudley has given up on insects and found new hobbies. The butterfly net lies forgotten in his second bedroom and only Harry remembers why he was in his cupboard in the first place.

The memory sinks to the back of his mind, he goes on. He learns of magic, he goes to Hogwarts...

And at first he's stretching his wings in a brief, glorious moment of freedom – before it all comes crashing down around him. Expectations, demands, and beliefs, crowding around him, hemming him in. Hero, saviour... scapegoat.

He hears the wings again, thudding against the glass in a blind panic – but this time the wings are his own.


	5. Hermione

Disclaimer: JKR's toys.

A/N: DH fic, set in between the last chapter and the epilogue. This isn't meant as ship-bashing or Ron-bashing, so I hope it doesn't come across as that. It's simply my attempt to reconcile my view of the characters and JKR's ending. I've never been interested in the Ron/Hermione or Harry/Ginny relationships and to be honest neither of them particularly work for me. But they're JKR's books, so she can do what she wants. It just always seemed to me that Harry and Hermione were far better friends than Ron and Hermione, and for me friendship is an important prerequisite of a lasting romance.

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**Best Friends (Hermione)  
**by Bil!

Hermione isn't in love with Harry, she's in love with Ron. She knows that a lot of people, many of them newspaper reporters, were hoping for some sort of love triangle, a juicy scandal for them to sharpen their quills on. Harry isn't a very good celebrity because he's too good a person and doesn't do anything interesting. No tempestuous affairs, no lusty love-children, just plain, simple, wonderful Harry. A nice scandalous love triangle with his two best friends would have livened things up immensely. Saint Potter does not good copy make.

But Hermione isn't in love with Harry. Her pulse doesn't quicken at his touch, she doesn't lose herself in his eyes, and she doesn't get the urge to drag him into the nearest room and snog him senseless. That is for Ginny and Hermione is glad, without the slightest hint of jealousy, that Harry has someone to adore him, someone to adore in return.

She's in love with Ron, you see. Head over heels, completely smitten. She knows even now that she will marry him, that they will have children together, grow old together...

But there is something she seldom admits, even to herself: She is not in love with Harry, certainly not, but... she loves him more than she loves Ron. Ron is the love of her life. Harry is her best friend.

It's Harry who finishes her sentences, Harry who consoles her when Ron does or says something completely stupid (for no matter how mature he becomes Ron will never lose his foot-in-mouth disease). She's the one to whom Harry comes for advice, she's the one who can break him out of his self-destructive guilt trips and make him face the world again.

They are best friends. It's as simple and as complicated as that.

If Ron died... Hermione has nightmares about that sometimes, the horror and the grief shaking her awake when old memories mix with new ones and create fears that she never imagined would follow that first, magical Hogwarts letter. If Ron died, she doesn't know that she would have the strength to go on.

But if Harry died, she would be lost. It sounds not as bad. It's worse.

No one ever told her that love was this complicated.

-


	6. Ginny

Disclaimer: JKR's world, my musings.

A/N: Set in DH, between the last chapter and the epilogue. This can be considered a companion piece to the previous chapter,_ Best Friends_. This is the first time I've written Ginny; as a character, she doesn't interest me, she's just Ron's little sister. But given that Harry, Hermione, and Ron have always been The Trio, how can she fit into that?

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**The Boy Who Lived (Ginny Weasley)  
**by Bil!

Ginny fell in love with the Boy Who Lived first. She's ashamed of it now but she wouldn't change it because it brought her to where she is now. One of her friends told her once how lucky she was to be married to the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived. Ginny just nodded and smiled and didn't bother to correct her. After all, she'd made that same mistake once. But now she understands what Ron meant.

It had been some stupid, childish argument and she'd wailed: "You don't understand! _You're_ friends with the Boy Who Lived!"

Ron had looked at her. "No," he said firmly. "I'm friends with Harry."

At the time she thought he was stupid, but she gets it now.

She'd fallen in love with the Boy Who Lived because he was brave, he was a hero, and he'd saved her from Tom Riddle. "I knew you wouldn't be happy unless you were hunting Voldemort," she told him when she was young, innocent, and a whole lot more stupid than she'd thought she was.

Now she knows better. The Boy Who Lived might like chasing Voldemort, but she isn't married to him. She is married to Harry, who carries scars she can't see and fights his way through nightmares he won't describe to her.

It is impossible for her not to love Harry; he's so sweet and kind and loving. He's also stubborn, pig-headed, and apt to bouts of idiotic chivalry, but that's all right. The Boy Who Lived might be perfect, but Harry isn't. He doesn't need to be. She loves him – him, not the Boy Who Lived – as much because of his faults as despite them.

He loves her too. The knowledge is as natural and certain to her as breathing. He would die for her, sacrifice his comfort for her happiness... and yet she knows that she doesn't quite come first for him. It hurt once, and she even thought of leaving him, but she's grown beyond that.

Harry wouldn't agree with her, he'd tell her that she is the most important thing in his life, his eyes alight with warmth and love. He'd think he was telling the truth. Ginny knows better.

Ron and Hermione come first. They always have, they always will. If Harry needs to talk he goes to them, not Ginny; to Ron if he wants sympathy, to Hermione if he wants answers. If he needs help or reassurance or backup – then he goes to them first. Always. They're a trio and nothing, not marriage, not death, can change that. Certainly not one Weasley girl with more courage than sense and more sympathy than understanding.

She's accepted that. Knew when she agreed to marry Harry that this was how her life would be. She loves him enough not to mind. Harry, not the Boy Who Lived.

When she thinks about this, Ginny knows that she's learnt the most important lesson of all.

-


	7. Ron

Disclaimer: JKR's world. I'm just playing.

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**Better Be Gryffindor (Ron Weasley)  
**By Bil!

Every Weasley was a Gryffindor. That was the unspoken rule. There'd been a bit of speculation that Percy might have gone to Ravenclaw, but even pompous perfect Percy had been sorted into Gryffindor. It only made Ron's nervousness about going to Hogwarts even worse. What if he was sorted into Hufflepuff? His dad told them over and over again that it didn't matter what house they went into, that there was no shame in Hufflepuff... but Ron knew there was. Anything but Gryffindor would be wrong. Anything but Gryffindor would be a failure.

It wasn't until he was falling asleep in the Gryffindor dormitory on his first night at Hogwarts that Ron could finally believe he wasn't going to fail. But it had been close. Closer than he'd ever admit.

Harry had confessed once that the sorting hat had wanted to put him in Slytherin. He'd spoken quietly, as if fearing rejection from Ron and Hermione, as if expecting them to tell him they couldn't be friends with him anymore. Hermione had immediately jumped in with assurances that it didn't matter what house he was in he was still their friend, and Ron had made agreeing noises.

He'd never told Harry or Hermione that the hat had made him the same offer.

* * *

Ron was _always_ the youngest brother: he had five older brothers all bigger and stronger and smarter than he was. He was always at the back, always the smallest and the dumbest, just trailing along in their footsteps. He wanted to stand out, to have something of his _own_. But if he was good at schoolwork it just meant he was like Bill and Percy; if he was good at Quidditch he was taking after Charlie; and of course in anything creative and adventurous there was no competing with the twins.

So if he did well in any of those things it wasn't a big deal, he was just living up to people's expectations because someone else had done it first. Someone else had already had all the praise and there wasn't any left for him. Even being able to beat all his brothers at chess – even if he _was_ the youngest – wasn't good enough because his dad was a brilliant chess player.

Ron was sick of hand-me-downs, he wanted something that was _his_. Some triumph someone else hadn't won first, something that didn't make people say "Oh, you're just like..." Even Ginny didn't have that problem because she might be the youngest but she was The Girl and that made her different right from the start. The ambition burned inside him, the desperate need to find something, do something, that would bring him out of the shadows, that would belong to him and him alone.

Percy... Percy would understand, he sometimes thought. Because Ron, looking up at his brothers, could see things that probably no one else in his family did. Bill, Charlie, even the twins, they were brilliant at what they did. Absolutely brilliant, with the casual ease of those who find things coming naturally to them.

But Percy wasn't brilliant, Ron could see. Percy was like him, with no natural talent, nothing to make him stand out. But Percy _worked_. He worked so very hard and because of that he could at least pretend he was brilliant. Every triumph, every success, cost him ten times as much effort as anything the others ever did and that was why those triumphs meant so much more to Percy, why he clung to his achievements and refused to let anyone take them away. He'd _earned_ them.

Ron wondered sometimes if the sorting hat had offered Percy not Ravenclaw but Hufflepuff. He was pretty sure it had offered him Slytherin.

* * *

"Another Weasley, eh?" the sorting hat murmured in his ear, voice like old cloth, and Ron winced. Always just another Weasley. Never _Ron_. The hat chuckled. "That's a nice thirst to prove yourself you have here. Real ambition. Slytherin would foster that ambition, you know. Teach you to use it well."

Slytherin! Merlin, his parents would kill him! He couldn't be in Slytherin! Slytherins were evil!

"Evil? Don't be foolish. There's nothing evil about ambition and you could do with a little cunning. You're one of the most unsubtle minds I've seen in several years. Slytherin would do you good."

Gryffindor! he thought urgently. It had to be Gryffindor. He was a Weasley, he _had_ to be in Gryffindor.

"You young people. Never knowing what's best for you." The hat sighed. "If you're quite sure...?"

He'd never been so sure of anything in his life.

"All right, then, have it your way. But remember what I said, you could have done well in Slytherin."

Ron remained obstinate.

"GRYFFINDOR!" yelled the hat and Ron beamed in relieved delight. 


End file.
